Ian Kikuchi
@curatorian.bsky.social
Historian & curator at the Imperial War Museum in the UK - history of war, conflict and IWM collections, with digressions into #judo and #videogames. 日本語を勉強している。Posts are personal views.
Some more blue plaquery from yesterday, this one being almost opposite Lenin's. A notable society figure, but I'm struck that her wiki bio gives no impression at all of her personality.
Ian Kikuchi@curatorian.bsky.social · 21h agoWalking around in central London earlier today when this caught my eye - a blue plaque marking a building once lived in by Lenin. I'm guessing he lived here while doing research at the British Museum reading room for 'Materialism and Empirio-criticism'.
There’s nothing like waiting 161 years to leave a bad review
Walking around in central London earlier today when this caught my eye - a blue plaque marking a building once lived in by Lenin. I'm guessing he lived here while doing research at the British Museum reading room for 'Materialism and Empirio-criticism'.
Walking around in central London earlier today when this caught my eye - a blue plaque marking a building once lived in by Lenin. I'm guessing he lived here while doing research at the British Museum reading room for 'Materialism and Empirio-criticism'.
I want Emily Wilson to review Gerald Thomas's 1964 historical epic Carry On Cleo.
One to mark the day - the anniversary of Britain's declaration of war against Germany in August 1914 #FWW Years ago I helped write the script for this audiovisual piece at IWM London. It took prob 20 or 30 versions before it both 1) said what it needed to say and 2) could be delivered in < 2 mins.
Saw a trailer at the cinema earlier for Pressure, and I have to say my brain really struggles to see Damian Lewis (6 ft 1 inch) as Bernard Montgomery (5 ft 6 inches).
After a twenty year journey I've finally made it back to the car after seeing #TheOdyssey.
Very proud of my clubmate Ben Levy's silver in the Commonwealth Games men's -73kg judo. 🥋 www.bbc.co.uk/sport/judo/a...
Commonwealth Games 2026: England's Ethan Nairne beats compatriot Benjamin Levy to win judo gold
Ethan Nairne defeats his compatriot Benjamin Levy in an all-English men's -73kg final to win gold at the Commonwealth Games.
bbc.co.uk
This on the face of it is pretty appalling. 'Hundreds of gravestones engraved with the names of those killed in both world wars were removed from the Basra War Cemetery in 2003, over fears that they could be destroyed or vandalised.' www.yahoo.com/news/world/a...
Army turned First and Second World War gravestones into gravel
The British Army crushed gravestones belonging to Commonwealth soldiers after they were removed from Basra, in southern Iraq, according to newly emerged documents.
yahoo.com
Just a few minutes on Bluesky and already today I've seen a post by an American saying, apparently without irony: 'I'm an antifascist but Italians were better off under Mussolini'.
The death penalty is an abomination.
Rima I Anabtawi@rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 5d agoRemarkable. [Ethiopian] Death row inmates desperate to escape execution in 🇸🇦 call the BBC "”I did not know what we were carrying. But later I was told it was khat. I don't even know what khat is," Habtom said..” www.bbc.com/news/article...
Was taking the offspring to visit a famous Zoo in London, and was surprised to pass this on the way - a memorial to Far East Prisoners of War and internees. The tablet sits above two crossed pieces of railway track, referencing the Burma Railway, and features an illustration by Ronald Searle. #FEPOW
The Secretary of State for Apathy weighs in.
Matt Frost@mattfrostie.bsky.social · 6d agoThe FIFA proposals are so bad that even Lisa Nandy has issued a statement!! 😳
Walking home in spitting rain and a steady breeze and it's lovely.
This is so disingenuous. If tou destroy a book to scan its content into some proprietary AI model, you deprive readers of a copy that might otherwise have been available freely in a library. And if you aren't preserving and making available the original page scans... 1/2
Eli Valley@elivalley.bsky.social · last wk.Dystopia www.news.com.au/technology/o...
Recently started playing #WarThunder and have been enjoying it. Arcade mode is living up to its name.
As an historian of the Second World War, I do wonder if the experience of, say, random death and wounding in the London Blitz and universal and intrusive wartime government intervention in everyday life was anything like that which we lived through during Covid.
Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · last wk.I believe this as well and it has changed profoundly how I see various periods in history, too.
1) Inception 2) The Dark Knight 3) Dunkirk (with The Prestige and Oppenheimer snapping at its heels) * with the caveat that I've not seen Interstellar and i bounced off Tenet after finding it completely baffling.
☀️ Starshine@starshine.bsky.social · last wk.lets keep this discourse going. rank your top 3 nolan films
For some reason I find myself watching Dr Fauci's committee appearance and my god most of these senators sound like unspeakable scumbags.
the wikipedia article "Official Cantonese translations of English names for British officials" has a fairly long section about how one english governor got his name translated to toilet bowl and this motivated setting up a translation service for names
![The 16th Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Reginald Stubbs, was first given a particularly distasteful Cantonese translation for his name. 史塔士 or Sí Taap Sí was the original Cantonese translation, literally meaning "history; a tower; a vassal". However, the first and the third characters of 史 and 士 share the same archaic pronunciation of the character 死 (sí), meaning "to die", and more troublesomely, the same pronunciation of the character 屎 (sí), meaning "shit".[10] Also, Cantonese speakers sometimes call a toilet bowl 屎塔 (sí taap), being homophones to the first two characters of his newly translated name.[5] Thus, Stubbs's first Cantonese name translation rendered a wide variety of somewhat unpalatable translations and interpretations, like "toilet bowl's shit", "shit tower's death" etc.[11]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:wh6xssqrag4sqko26tfu4idx/bafkreifew5vx23fwnghcjqkw2uh2d7iuf7m5gvcadj6yewtw27sbodqywi)